Here's a slightly expanded version of the plot line I drew on the board in order to help us visualize how the narrative structure was predicated on return and repetition. This is partly how Freud builds his reading of the story as an enactment of the Return of the Repressed (as always, more on that concept later). But he is also interested in the way the various returns hinge on parent/child relationships. This might be a good avenue into our next work, Henry James' The Turn of the Screw which is haunted by various combinations of families, none of them strictly "natural." And issues of sight, what exactly it is which we see with our mental and physical faculties, will also return.
(The diagram at the top of the post will enlarge if you click on it so you can read it better.)
The diagram was helpful. than you
ReplyDeleteI think it does help to visualize plots of any narrative, but especially the first couple of ones we're reading in this class because I want students to get a sense of how narrative form works: that the reader is implicated in the storyline from a particular angle with plenty of built-in assumptions.
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